The certainty of the worlds of spirits and, consequently, of the immortality of souls…

At Coventry there dwelt with me in the Governors House, Major Wilkie, a Scottish Soldier, and a Scholar of considerable Learning; he was Engineer for Fortification. He would drink too much, and had the signs of a heated Brain, but no failing ⟨p. 179⟩of his Reason perceivable. He confidently affirmed his constant notice of Spirits good and bad about him; that he had a good Genius and an Enemy: That one Night his Enemy said, I have torn his Liver, and that he made a Chamber-Pot full of Blood in the Morning: He was confident, that Thunder and Lightning was the Wars of Spirits, foretelling and respecting such things below: He pretended to know by the Thunder and Lightning which side in the Wars should have the Victory: In 1643 or 1644, about a Year and half after the Wars begun, he said, That it was revealed to him, that the War should endure three Years and an half, and the Parliament should Conquer; but their own Divisions should after keep them long unsettled. He said, that being in Paris, in a clear Moonshine Night (many Years before) being walking in his Chamber, and repeating Buchanan's Version of the second Psalm, Quare fremuerunt gentes, &c. suddenly a great noise made him look out, and he saw a Constellation in the shape of a Lion Rampant against the Moon, and while he long gazed on it, one Leg broke off, and turned to the similitude of a Cock, and after the three other Legs broke off. And when he was in Bed his good Spirit expounded it to him, and told him, that the Moon was the Church here, and the Assaulting Lion was ⟨p. 180⟩England, Wales, and Ireland, by the King turned against the Church: that the Foot first broken off, was Scotland, as a Cock, by crowing awakened the other three, and that all should end in Conquest of the Assailants.

At Coventry there dwelt with me in the Governours House, Major Wilkie, a Scottish Soldier, and a Scholar of considerable Learning; he was Engineer for Fortification. He would drink too much, and had the signs of a heated Brain, but no failing ⟨p. 179⟩of his Reason perceivable. He confidently affirmed his constant notice of Spirits good and bad about him; that he had a good Genius and an Enemy: That one Night his Enemy said, I have torn his Liver, and that he made a Chamber-Pot full of Blood in the Morning: He was confident, that Thunder and Lightning was the Wars of Spirits, foretelling and respecting such things below: He pretended to know by the Thunder and Lightning which side in the Wars should have the Victory: In 1643 or 1644, about a Year and half after the Wars begun, he said, That it was revealed to him, that the War should endure three Years and an half, and the Parliament should Conquer; but their own Divisions should after keep them long unsetled. He said, that being in Paris, in a clear Moonshine Night (many Years before) being walking in his Chamber, and repeating Buchanan's Version of the second Psalm, Quare fremuerunt gentes, &c. suddenly a great noise made him look out, and he saw a Constellation in the shape of a Lion Rampant against the Moon, and while he long gazed on it, one Leg broke off, and turned to the similitude of a Cock, and after the three other Legs broke off. And when he was in Bed his good Spirit expounded it to him, and told him, that the Moon was the Church here, and the Assaulting Lion was